After two days of having their fortifications pounded with increasing ferocity, the garrison sent out their messenger. This time, with me quietly obedient at his side, my husband made the man stand in the morning sun for over an hour while he debated whether or not to accept their surrender. He sat in his chair stroking his chin while he made a great show of contemplation.
He lifted his cup of wine and drank deeply, keeping his eyes fixed on the garrison’s representative. Then he called for a platter of cold meats and proceeded to nibble at them. The young man’s eyes couldn’t leave the sight of the food. He stood rigid without trembling but his tongue licked his cracked lips as he watched my husband eat and drink.
After a while my husband tossed the remaining food to the hound which lay at his feet. I wanted to scream at him to stop the torment but I didn’t dare say anything. The livid bruises on my body were an aching reminder of the fragility of my position. At last he flicked his fingers then one at a time with infinite care he sucked the grease from them.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I have considered the matter and I agree to the terms of surrender. You may go and inform your commander. But tell him I insist it be done properly. He will understand what I mean.’
At midday we were seated waiting for Sir William Oliphant and his men. I was ordered to be present and sat silently beside my husband. My gown was fastened high on my throat with a jewelled brooch for I’d no wish for others to see evidence of our quarrel. Of course my women knew. How could I have hidden such things from them? But we were well-used to keeping secrets and our life together in our overcrowded rooms was probably more intimate than that of many a husband and wife.
The main gate opened and out they came. There must have been about thirty of them. They were stripped down to their under-shirts and were barefoot. Their hair was covered in ashes and round their necks each man wore a noose of coarse rope. Despite this abasement and their obvious pitiable condition they held their heads high and our men raised a cheer for their bravery.
They walked down the castle approach to where we sat. The men knelt on the muddied grass while Sir William Oliphant went down on his knees at my husband’s feet. He looked him straight in the eye and, with hands which shook only slightly under the weight, held out the great iron keys of the castle.
‘To you Edward of England,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘I surrender these keys and this castle and I offer myself and my men into your custody and care.’
He was younger than I had expected. Somehow I’d thought he would be a grizzled old captain but he couldn’t have been much older than me. My husband put his shoulders back and regarded the man at his feet.
‘Better late than never, Sir William.’
He turned to Aymer de Valence who stood at his right shoulder.
‘Have them in chains. They can go to London, to the Tower.’
I gasped. ‘My lord!’
‘You wish to say something?’
He fixed me with a look which made my whole body tremble.
‘No, my lord. It’s just that ...’ I bit my lip, afraid to go on and wishing I’d not spoken.
‘Just what?’
‘What will happen to them? To Sir William and his men?’
‘Oh, I’ll not hang them if that’s what you’re worried about, my soft-hearted wife.’ He laid great emphasis on those last words, delivering them with a slight sneer in his voice. ‘Failure to submit to your overlord is treason, but on this occasion I am minded to be merciful. They can endure a spell in prison for their sins.’
The kneeling men were dragged up and hustled away. My husband gazed after them, a look suspiciously like regret in his eyes.
‘Well,’ he said to those around him. ‘A pity that’s all over but there it is. Let’s go and celebrate. Ralph! Guy!’
He called to his men. A search would have to be made of the castle and any bodies buried and there would need to be an inventory. I despaired to think of the unnecessary loss of life.
‘And the day after next,’ said my husband, rubbing his hands on his thighs with enthusiasm for the task ahead, ‘we shall have a tournament to celebrate.’
In the arena, trumpets sounded and gaily coloured pennants flew in the breeze. The men were as cheerful as I had seen them since the feast at Falkirk more than two years ago. They challenged each other in the lists, thundering down the course, lances pointing, shields at the ready, either shouting victory or pulling themselves up out of the dirt.
There was laughter and cheering and why should they not be joyful? We had prevailed. The castle was ours, the war was over, Scotland was part of my husband’s realm and at last we had put an end to the spilling of blood. The two lands were now one: one throne, one crown, one king. All the Scottish nobles were safely within my husband’s peace and if there were any dissenters they wisely kept their thoughts well hidden.
I kept my eyes on the earl of Carrick but he seemed as merry as the others. Watching him on that late summer morning, I could almost believe I had imagined those moments in the abbey church at Cambuskenneth, the two men in the shadows and the whispers of treason. But I knew I hadn’t.
That night I dreamed of the delights of the marriage bed. I sighed, as a man’s firm hands stroked my breasts and my belly. I saw the whiteness of my skin and his rough brown fingers tracing the curves of my body. I moaned as he pressed his lips against my neck, nipping the skin slightly with his teeth. I gasped as he held me closer, crushing me against his chest, forcing my head back. I looked into his eyes and saw ... the steady dark gaze of the earl of Carrick.
I woke in terror. It is said the devil sends dreams to women who have neglected to guard themselves against sin and certainly it was an evil spirit which sent this one. I lay awake, whispering prayers, pleading with Our Lady to protect me from whatever demons prowled out there in the darkness, yet all the while aware of the surging waves of desire sweeping through every part of my body.
12
Autumn 1304 - Summer 1305
We left Stirling at the end of the summer and crossed back into England. The heat had faded the grass to the colour of bleached linen and everywhere the trees were turning to their autumn livery of brown and gold. We skirted the high moorland country where crisp branches of heather purpled the ground and descended to where flat green fields stretched out towards a distant shimmering sea. A half-day’s journey from Beverley we reached the royal castle at Burstwick where my husband wished to rest and regain his strength. And it was here in the wilds of Holderness that he and I at last made our peace.
Since that dreadful day at Stirling our estrangement had continued, neither of us prepared to apologise and admit to being in the wrong. But in the long quiet days at Burstwick, we found the words and the feelings to repair the damage we had wrought. I knew I had been too full of pride and self-importance and he admitted to selfishness and bad temper.
‘I am a fool,’ he said. ‘I sometimes forget what a pearl I have in you, my dear. You have a purity of heart which puts me to shame.’
‘No, my lord,’ I protested. ‘I am the one who is fortunate. Look at what you have given me.’
He patted my knee companionably.
‘What have I given you but the sight of war and the opportunity to share an old man’s bed?’
‘You’re not old,’ I protested. ‘You’re just stubborn and foolish.’
‘Ah, my dear. If I am foolish in war, am I not also foolish in love?’
He took my hand in his. He had never before spoken of love. How strange it was after we had endured a quarrel so bitter and hurtful and I had seen the worst of what men can do to each other, that he should speak those words. I laid my head against his chest feeling the thud of his heartbeat and thought once again how fortunate I was.
We stayed at Burstwick for three months. Part of me wanted to rush back to Woodstock to see our boys but my husband’s need
s came first and weekly letters reassured me that Thomas and Edmund were well. I sent instructions to Sir Stephen for winter cloaks, fur-lined with silver buttons, and for beaver-skin hats to keep my sons’ heads warm when travelling.
We wandered in the gardens, did a little hunting and some hawking and gradually my husband began to feel stronger. We rode by the shore of the estuary where the slippery mud gleamed silver in the morning sun and a hundred different birds poked and pecked in the glistening, oozing marshes.
‘Look!’ I whispered. ‘A heron.’
There he stood, solitary, hunched and grey, his feathers ruffled. Then with no warning and a mighty flapping of wings he was up and gone while my husband cursed the lack of his hawk.
As the autumn days grew shorter and the winds began blowing cold off the Northern Sea we received sad news - the earl of Surrey, my husband’s friend, John de Warenne, was dead.
‘I could weep for the death of my old comrade,’ said my husband bleakly. ‘We didn’t always agree but he was a good, loyal man. They’re all dying, wife, every one of them, all my old comrades-in-arms. Soon only I shall be left and what will become of us then?’
But his grief at the death of his friend was blunted by the news of two new grandchildren: a son for Joan and a daughter for Elizabeth. I tried not to mind that that Elizabeth had named her daughter, Eleanor. It was natural to honour her mother but an evil worm whispered, “She didn’t choose your name, did she?”
After a happy Christmas gathering at Lincoln we journeyed through the cold winter countryside for the happiest of reunions with our boys. But the happiness had not lasted and by the time we reached the Island of Thorns my beloved sister was dead.
I wept and wept until I thought I might drown in my tears. Mary sat on the settle and took my hands in hers.
‘Dearest Marguerite, please stop crying. You will harm yourself.’
Tears seeped through my fingers and dripped onto my woollen gown.
I heard her say to some other person, ‘I can do nothing. She is destroyed with grief.’
The news had come by messenger, a man with the red lion of the royal house of Hapsburg emblazoned on his tunic and a letter for the king of England. My husband came to me. I don’t remember what he said but I remember crying out, falling to my knees and covering my head with my hands.
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘No! It can’t be true. It’s a mistake. She can’t be dead. God wouldn’t take her away from me. Not now. Not like this.’
He knelt beside me. I saw his robe, crimson red, the fur trimming brushing softly against my face, as I pressed my forehead against the hard cold tiles on the floor.
‘Come, my dear,’ he said. ‘Remember who you are.’
I beat my fists against the ground.
‘I am her sister,’ I sobbed. ‘That’s who I am. I am her sister. She didn’t have anyone except me and I have no-one but her.’
He raised me up and held me in his arms. Then he placed me gently on a chair and held a cup of wine to my lips.
‘Drink. It will help, believe me.’
I looked at him through the veil of my tears. I took the cup but my hands shook too much so he held it to my mouth. The metal was cold against my lips and I choked as the liquid burned my throat.
‘I lost both my sisters,’ he said, with the utmost kindness in his voice. ‘And Edmund, my dearest brother. I understand.’
But no-one could understand. Blanche had been everything to me. She had been my only companion, my only friend, my only confidante. She had gone to her marriage with such high hopes but from my mother’s letters I knew she had been unhappy. Rudolf was not the husband she’d imagined and indeed no man could have lived up to the dreams she’d woven for herself. And the babies who might have been of comfort to her had in the end destroyed her.
She died in a distant place I had never seen. I’d imagined travelling across the Narrow Sea to visit her, flying up the steps of her fairytale castle, the two of us dancing across the floor as we’d done in our long-ago childhood days at Vincennes. But there had been my babies and the Scottish war. My husband could not spare me from his side and I had let her die alone and without me.
The letter said she was to be buried in the church of the Greyfriars near her husband’s palace but by the time we received the news she was already in her tomb. I was not even there to say farewell.
‘The sister was lost to her years ago,’ I heard my husband say. ‘She never knew but it was obvious. A Hapsburg wife? Not a marriage to which I would have condemned one of my daughters.’
I thought of those happy days at Fontainebleau: long drifts of grasses, green leaves stirring gently as we sat weaving crowns from brightly-coloured flowers. I thought of the bitter winter nights, skies heavy and dark, when snow grew high in the courtyards and Blanche lay quietly curled in my arms. And the New Year gift of a pair of lovebirds in a gilded latticed cage. I had wept with joy at her kindness and with sorrow for the plight of the small trapped creatures and she had laughed and called me foolish.
I heard a voice from far away. ‘Marguerite, please dearest, stop crying.’
I thought of her carefree laugh, her sparkling eyes, her rose-coloured lips and her tumbling shining hair. The days spread out before my eyes in a never-ending tapestry of joy. But it was all gone.
Mary called my physician, and when the cordials and potions failed to stop the tears, she called my confessor.
He had come with me in the days when I was a new bride. ‘You will need someone you can trust,’ my mother had said, ‘Someone who will be your man, not your husband’s, someone who has your spiritual welfare as his first concern, not the machinations of your English court.’
And so it had proved. In the months and years which followed he had listened to my halting confessions, to my admissions of sins which his cloistered life could never have allowed him to imagine, and his advice had brought me closer to God. He was small, round-faced and elderly, a man who cared nothing for the trappings of palace life, who spent his days in prayer and contemplation. He was a good man and he helped me to be good.
‘God listens to you, my child,’ he said, sitting close. ‘He hears your cries and sees the sorrow in your heart.’
‘Why has God taken her?’ I wept. ‘I cannot live with the thought of her gone.’
‘You are thinking of yourself again. Remember what we said before. The self must be set aside in the care of others. Only then can you achieve true salvation. It is not for you to pit yourself against the will of God. If He has taken your sister, it is not for you to question why. Your sister does not need your tears. Pray for her soul. Do not spend your time indulging your own sorrow.’
At that I stopped weeping and began to think of my family: my two little boys, my husband, my stepdaughters and their children, and my stepson - all so dear to me. And my friends: Lady Margaret and Alice. I had much for which to be grateful but the thought did little to assuage the pain in my heart. People were kind, but where my sister had been there was an emptiness which could never be filled.
I learned to live with my grief and one warm afternoon as I walked in the gardens of the archbishop’s palace, I tested my bruised heart and found it less painful than before. A line of clerics in dark robes were hurrying across the bridge towards the abbey and nearby some young men were fooling about in the dust. They were screaming with laughter and rolling on the ground in a show of vulgar horseplay. To my horror I recognised one of them as Master Gaveston and another as my stepson.
‘You look sad, my lady.’
I jumped. I’d thought I was alone with my thoughts.
‘Sir Robert. You delight in catching me unawares.’
‘I doubt you’d make a good soldier, my lady. Those who sleep in the heather make easy prey for their enemies.’
Remembering my dream of last summer I blushed, and found myself unable to meet his
eyes.
‘What are you doing here, Sir Robert?’ I said in a voice which was a little unsteady. ‘I thought you were in Scotland.’
He smiled. ‘I was. My castle at Lochmaben is in a sorry state after the fighting and I had a mind to rebuild it in stone.’
‘Does it look well?’
‘Well enough. There’s much still to do but a man who wants something badly enough must be prepared to wait.’
‘And are you good at waiting?’
‘Yes,’ he said looking directly at me. ‘I have learned to bide my time.’
If he was accustomed to getting what he wanted however long it took and whatever he had to do to achieve his ends, then he was a very dangerous man indeed, and not just to his enemies.
‘You haven’t said why you are here?’ I said gazing at the toes of my shoes.
‘I’m here, my lady, because his grace needs three good men to advise his council on his new possession.’
‘And he chose you?’ I looked up and then wished I hadn’t.
‘And Bishop Wishart and one of the lord of Badenoch’s men.’
‘Not the lord of Badenoch himself?’
He laughed. ‘John Comyn and I find it hard to sit down together. It’s better he sends one of his men. This way we shall make progress not spit at each other across the table.’
‘And Bishop Wishart?’
‘A fiery man and a patriot.’
‘Like yourself.’
‘Yes, my lady, like myself. I am a Scot and I love my country.’
‘But you are a man of the border too so surely you have allegiances on both sides.’
‘I do. I have houses in many places: in your husband’s northern counties, in my wife’s homeland where the earls of Carrick have long held land, and here in the south. I have a house at Tottenham. So you could say I belong nowhere.’
The Pearl of France Page 20
